Apology Tours: 2018 Edition

During his first year in office, President Obama embarked on a global apology tour.  The Heritage Foundation put together a list of ten examples of him apologizing in just his first four and a half months in office alone; compiled just before he began a trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany, and France. During a speech in liberals’ favorite country, France, he complained about America’s “failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world” and highlighting his plans to close the terrorist detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; which ultimately never came to fruition.  The President also apologized for America’s “arrogance,” one of many times he would reject the idea of American exceptionalism.  As far as Europe’s leading role in the world, Europe has led the globe in implementing the disastrous principles of open borders, political correctness, third-wave feminism and socialism that have only hastened the phenomenon identified by Pat Buchanan as “The Death of the West.”  

According to Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas, the apology tour came full circle during his trip to Cuba during the final year of his Presidency. During a press conference with the country’s oppressive dictator Raul Castro, President Obama seemed to agree with Castro when he said that the US had no business lecturing the communist country on human rights because of its “denial of health care and education for all and ‘equal pay’ for women.”  Rather than call out the geriatric despot for throwing political dissidents into prison (which America does not do), America’s 44^th President told the audience “I personally would not disagree with him.” 

Nine years after the bulk of President Obama’s infamous apology tour took place, many people and organizations have embarked on apology tours of their own for a few different reasons. The rules for apology tours differ based on political beliefs.  People like “comedian” Michelle Wolf, who romanticize abortions and compare ICE agents to terrorists, do not face any pushback or pressure to embark on apology tours.  Conservatives who engage in equally outrageous behavior had better hope that an apology tour will help them salvage their careers.   

Sometimes, apology tours do not satisfy the demands of the self-appointed elders in the Court of Public Opinion.  President Trump learned that the hard way this week.  He has gone on quite an extensive apology tour for his comments in Helsinki, Finland where he said “I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia” meddling in our election.  He issued a clarification on Tuesday, saying he meant to use the word “wouldn’t” instead of “would.”  He stressed that he accepted the findings of the intelligence agencies that the Russians interfered in the 2016 Presidential election during appearances on CBS and CNBC. Yet his apologies did little to quell the concerns of his adversaries in the mainstream media and the Democratic Party who continue to brand him as treasonous and accuse him of doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. 

Liberal actor and Director Mark Duplass recently suggested on Twitter that his liberal friends should try listening to Ben Shapiro, calling him a “genuine person.”  That didn’t go well.  His liberal friends soon harassed him for giving someone who engages in “wrongthink” a compliment.   Duplass decided to retract his tweet and ended up apologizing, calling his tweet a “disaster on so many levels” and making it explicitly clear that he still subscribed to the SJW agenda.  Shapiro ended up summarizing the lesson learned as a result of this experience: “Today’s leftist lesson on Twitter: write a nice tweet about someone with whom you disagree politically, get labeled a racist sexist homophobe. Good stuff, guys. Really showing that tolerant streak.”

Duplass’s apology tour comes not long after that of Canadian singer Shania Twain, who apologized after saying she would have voted for President Trump had she lived in the United States, “even though he was offensive, he seemed honest.”  Twain’s twitter apology, where she proclaimed that she did not “hold any common moral beliefs with the current President,” only came as a result of backlash from the liberal mob.   

Both Duplass and Twain could learn a lot from Kanye West, who said “The mob can’t make me not love him,” referring to all of the pushback he got shortly after tweeting out that he liked the way conservative commentator Candace Owens thinks and later saying that he loved Donald Trump, called him his brother, and posted a picture of himself sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat.  It looks like West has no desire to go on an apology tour; he may actually end up travelling to North Korea with Dennis Rodman.    

A lot of the ideology that makes people who say nice things about conservatives feel the need to go on apology tours originates at America’s colleges and universities.  For this reason, DePaul University Professor Jason Hill has decided to go an apology tour of his own; offering a mea culpa to the American people in a recent op-ed for The Hill.   He diagnosed the problem, that America’s institutions of higher education “politically indoctrinate students into becoming socialists who will do anything to prohibit freedom of speech on college campuses.” Maybe God had college professors in mind when he declared in Jeremiah 23 “woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!”  Then again, that message just as easily applies to Hollywood, which has played an enormous role in  “destroying and scattering the sheep.”  In an effort to stop the indoctrination of American youth, Hill offered a revolutionary idea: “we need to defund (our universities), rebuild them, disband and rebuild them with conservative principles — that is, values advocating individualism, capitalism, Americanism, free speech, self-reliance and the morality of wealth creation,”  making the point that “educational systems that have become such propaganda machines should not be funded by taxpaying Americans.”  He certainly has an uphill battle ahead in turning his vision into reality.  Maybe he could exempt schools awarded “green lights” by The Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (FIRE) from his shutdown.   

It seems like the National Football League has already gone an apology tour for its new national anthem policy before it even went into effect.  The NFL announced a new policy requiring players who choose to assemble on the field before the game to stand for the national anthem but gave players who did not want to stand for the national anthem the option of remaining in the locker room.  The NFL’s new policy attempted to address the concerns of loyal football fans who had videotaped themselves burning their NFL gear because they did not like to see football players kneeling for the national anthem. The kneeling during the anthem essentially began with 49ers player Colin Kaepernick taking a knee for the anthem in an effort to protest police brutality.  After President Trump used some colorful language when weighing in on the controversy during a rally in Alabama, many more NFL players decided to kneel for the national anthem on the following Sunday to show solidarity with Kaepernick and the small group of social justice warriors who hoped to use their “kneel-outs” during the national anthem to raise awareness for their causes.  While the number of football players who kneeled for the national anthem dwindled as the season went on, the NFL lost many loyal viewers, who shared President Trump’s views on the matter, seeing the players’ actions as disrespectful to the American flag and the men and women who have served our country protecting it.   The NFL appears to have backpedalled on its new policy just two weeks before preseason football begins, citing a grievance filed by the NFL Players’ Association as the reason why.  If the NFL keeps wimping out on implementing the new anthem policy, Michelle Malkin’s prediction of the NFL standing for “No Fans Left” may just end up becoming a reality.  

Liberal actor Robert De Niro embarked on a one-day apology tour where he travelled to our northern neighbor and apologized for President Trump; specifically citing his “idiotic behavior” at the G-7 summit that had taken place there the previous week.  If Robert De Niro loves Canada so much, why doesn’t he fulfill the promise that many of his fellow dignitaries in Hollywood failed to keep and move there? 

President Trump’s entire Presidency has essentially served as an apology tour for the mistakes of his predecessors in both parties; specifically focusing on trade deals and immigration policies that have led to lower wages.  While President Trump’s apology tour has included several campaign-style rallies, he has also accomplished a great deal on the apology tour without even leaving Washington, D.C. by ending the individual mandate for Obamacare, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal.  He has shown that he can accomplish many of the goals on his apology tour by simply firing off a tweet.

 

Hopefully, the culture of political correctness will eventually disappear from the mainstream; preventing the need for Americans who say anything slightly flattering about a conservative from feeling the need to go on an apology tour.  As for President Trump’s apology tour, hopefully the American people will allow it to continue for another four years.